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Topic: SMC Pentax M 50mm 1.4 (Read 2927 times)

after seeing the great pictures from Dustin and others with the Helios 44-2, I started looking for one on ebay and ended up with a SMC Pentax 50mm 1.4 K-mount instead. I must say: I am impressed. It produces great bokeh and as far as I can tell is pretty sharp wide open and only costed 85 Euro.

It is fully manual and it is a challenge to nail focus. Luckily, I was able to change my focusing screen to a EG-S, which really helps and the view finder in the 6D big and bright.

The build quality is really impressive and its a joy to use.

Of course, if you are reading this you'll want to see some pictures.

The following pictures are all on a 6D and all @1.4. They were shot in RAW and run through Lightroom with the default settings.

The first two are at 200 ISO and 1/200.The third one is at 250 ISO and 1/125.

I'm loving the colour of these images. It tempts me to get an adapter to use the lens from my father's K-M, I think from memory it's a 50/1.7. What's the minimum focus distance on the 1.4, it looks pretty close?

Meanwhile, I have my OM 50/1.4 which is also excellent on my 6D, except for the lack of communication with the camera. Old lenses can be surprising great, especially if comfortable with manual exposure and manual focus.

Lovely photos - and nice timing: I just bought its screwmount SMC Takumar predecessor (I very much like the look and feel of the older focus rings) and am eagerly awaiting its arrival early next week; your photos are making me a bit less patient.... There are some great bargains to be had via manual lenses (though I prefer to use mine on mirrorless Sony - magnification + focus peaking + EVF makes it far easier for me to use them).

thanks for the reply. The minimal focus distance is 45 cm. Umfortunatly, k-mount lenses have to be destructively modified to work on a full frame Canon. On APS-C there are no clearence problems, at least on the 400D and 70D I've tested.

I feel the same way about old lenses. In addition to the 50mm I have a 85mm 1.9 SMC Takumar, a 135mm 2.5 SMC Takumar and a Carl Zeiss Jena 200mm 2.8 all in m42 mount. The Takumars are wonderfull wide open. They are a lot better than my nifty fifty or my 24-105L when they are wide open. I plan to post examples from the Takumars and the CZJ when I have some good images that aren't of my kids.

I also have a Porst 135mm 2.8, that is very soft wide open and has what appears to be the typical purple halo from lenese of the same generation when shot wide open. It's build quality is not as good as the Takumars. or the Zeiss. It's general condition is also not as good as the other lenes I've listed here.

I've been using these things for years as macro lenses, either reversed or on a set of tubes (or both). They're renowned for image quality, which explains why the prices on eBay have shot up. The radioactive models are not as easy to identify as people think - most of them did have "TAKUMAR" on the front, but there's at least one batch of 50/1.4s that don't:

hi, i'm a lucky(maybe) new owner of the asahi regular glass PENTAX 1:1.4 50mm ASHAI OPT. CO. JAPAN , may i be sure that this objective is not radioactive?lens become yellow anyway? Uranium produce the same yellow effect instead of thorium?

I've been using these things for years as macro lenses, either reversed or on a set of tubes (or both). They're renowned for image quality, which explains why the prices on eBay have shot up. The radioactive models are not as easy to identify as people think - most of them did have "TAKUMAR" on the front, but there's at least one batch of 50/1.4s that don't: